Not Resegregation.

So today I read that the Supreme Court of the US has decided that race cannot be the sole factor in assigning students to public schools.
Yay.

Really. This is good news. It is unfortunate that the decision was due to two white parents in Kentucky and Washington who were upset that they could not move their children to another school. However; this is a great decision and underscores my long standing position that the 1954 Brown V. Board of Ed of Topeka Kansas was fatally flawed. For those unfamiliar with the Brown V. Ed. decision, it basically ruled that legal segregation, that is having laws on the books that says blacks can't go to school here, or there, was unconstitutional. No problem with that. The problem was that the wording of the text was SO obnoxious that any self respecting black person ought to wretch upon reading it. In that decision it was claimed that black children were mentally damaged by not being able to share a school room with white children.

Bullshit.

That commentary was nothing less than the usual White Supremacy talk that holds that black people are in need of white people in order to make it. That our ability to strive was dependent upon the good influence of white people.

Right.

So that was my love hate relationship with Brown V. Board. Glad the whole legal thing was taken apart, but hated the language. This brings us to the current decision. Talking heads of various Head Negroes in Charge organizations are grabbing microphones and standing in front of waiting TV cameras to wail and moan about the return of segregation. Ummm..No. The decision says that school boards/districts cannot use race as the sole reason to send a student off on a two hour bus ride to another school. There's nothing in the decision that says where students cannot go based on their race. Important distinction.

Most importantly though, the Head Negroes in Charge and their white counterparts, have not been caught on camera noting that so called "segregated" schools all ready exist. The fact is that by having assigned school zones, the local schools are already reflective of the demographics of a given community. Therefore if said community is 99% white such as, oh Upper Saddle River, NJ, then you can bet that the student population there is, yes you guessed it, white. Similarly in say, Bushwick Brooklyn, NY, you will find that 90% of the students are black, same as the neighborhood.

The problem, which I have said to anyone who would listen was not who was sitting in the seats it was the funding of the schools. Schools are funded based on the property taxes generated by the neighborhood. Clearly a flawed system, since the poorer the neighborhood the worse the funding for a school. Therefore, this decision is a great opportunity for concerned black folks to speak out for a change in the funding system for schooling. If greedy white suburbanites don't want their taxes going to other school districts, then they ought to be reminded of the cost to the taxpayer to house those who the educational system fails, read: jail.

So don't pay attention to the talking heads wailing about the return to the plantation. Not happening. If only because corporate agriculture has been importing new slave labour from Mexico. Black folk in America have been trained to think that greater education is directly proportional to the proximity of white people. No doubt that there has been truth to that, but now is an opportunity to break that chain.

Technorati Tags: Black Education, critique, governance, Supreme Court, US Constitution